A lot of cafés seem to be designed to be similar to every other café. But when a café locates itself in Trinity’s Science Gallery, “a dynamic new exploration of the interface between science, technology and culture”, it invites itself to be different. Obviously this is going to be difficult when you’re just trying to feed people.

Whatever their motives, Flux serves an interesting menu of Italian-inspired dishes in stylish surroundings. (It is run by the people behind Il Caffé di Napoli on Westland Row). My bruschetta was very generously proportioned with well-flavoured tomatoes, olive oil, roasted peppers and goat’s cheese. Sadly it was peppered with dozens of shards of raw garlic, just small enough to be easily missed on a fork but big enough to zap your taste buds each time. Frankly it ruined the dish and probably the rest of my colleagues’ afternoon as well. I left the shards I spotted in a neat pile in the corner of the plate, which is my passive-aggressive method of choice of complaining to a kitchen.

A toasted foccacia with roasted courgette and goat’s cheese was also generously sized, to the point that I left one piece untouched. The fillings were nicely in proportion to the pleasantly crumby, olive-oily bread. Minestrone was a decent effort, if a little light on flavour. “Stewp” is a recent addition to the menu, which can only be “a dynamic new exploration of the interface” between soup and stew.

Although Flux Café‘s prices are a little higher than other’s, they are appropriate to the size of the portions and the table service that is provided. Coffee is good and the apparently exclusively Italian service staff friendly, and it’s not difficult to get a table at 13:00. A nice touch is the selection of glossy popular science magazines that you can flick through, creating possibilities for an edifying lunchbreak.

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Being in The Duke sometimes feels like being in the holodeck from Star Trek. It’s full of cosy nooks and dark crannies – except for one small window looking onto Marks & Spencers’ brightly strip-lit concrete loading bay. Pondering a pint, it just begins to look like the hologram has malfunctioned in that one square metre.

Holograms aside, The Duke is a real pub that is worth your lunchtime patronage. As you’d expect, they serve a carvery lunch. The selection is small compared to, say, O’Neill’s runway-sized offering, but it does have the multiple kinds of potato any self-respecting carvery lunch should have. To be honest, the carvery has that generally anonymous flavour that I suspect is the steam table’s legacy – something that is not at all unique to The Duke. That said, when you want a quantity of food that will completely obscure the plate it is served on, a carvery is hard to beat.

A better lunch in The Duke is simply a toasted sandwich, with some combination of ham, cheese, tomato and onion. There’s so many floor staff that you are rarely kept waiting no matter where you sit. It also isn’t afflicted with the 13:05 crush that is a feature of businesses that more directly serve the lunch market, so lunch in the Duke is a restful experience.

As winter descends, I find the stylishly sterile cafés around less and less inviting of an afternoon, so instead, buy some posh biscuits in the stylishly sterile Carluccio’s next door and sneak them into The Duke to accompany a cup of tea beside their coal fire. (The Duke actually do serve an individually wrapped ginger nut with the tea).

It doesn’t take much lateral thinking to arrive at the conclusion that The Duke is a worthwhile destination for lunch. The possibilities for a cheeky pint or a hot port only add to the proposition.

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Rating: 4 out of 5
Visited: about 1 year ago
Location: Cows Lane

I wonder if men are missing a gastronomic trick by refusing to eat their lunch in girly places. You almost never see men in the consistently excellent Avoca, for example. (Signs on the wall there warn to be watchful of your handbag).

A place with a name like Queen of Tarts is hardly going to tempt this demographic, I suspect. That’s just as much as a shame as Avoca, though, because Queen of Tarts is a cosy spot serving top-quality cakes, scones, biscuits, savoury tarts, soups and salads. There are two branches; a tiny one on Dame Street and a much larger one on Cow’s Lane. By virtue of its split levels, the larger one retains the cosiness of the smaller one.

The roasted tomato and goat’s cheese tart (€9.95) was generously served with foccacia, a dill potato salad, a bean salad, and salad leaves. The tomatoes’ treatment had intensified their richness while keeping some of the acidity, which the cheese also had, which made for a moreish tart that was not heavy. The pastry was superb, as you’d hope: rich and substantial but not tough, and toasted to a nutty dark brown.

Though the white bread base of the foccacia would have made a beautiful sliced pan, it hadn’t been adorned with enough oil, salt or herbs to make the inch-thick slab particularly interesting to eat.

The chocolate scone joins Avoca’s ranks. Does any other foodstuff illustrate how little some cafés care about their customers? Dry grenades of crumbs are the rule rather than the exception, far beyond the help of a blister pack of jam. Queen of Tarts’ scones are an exception. Studded with yielding chocolate chips, they fall neatly apart along their fault lines, perfect for smearing with cream and jam. Speaking of caring about customers, a jug of water will thoughtfully arrive infusing with a big sprig of mint and a quarter of a lemon.

Victoria sponge didn’t have the ethereal lightness of other bought sponges, and all the better for it; only a battery of industrial raising agents can manage that. Yellow with butter and egg yolks, it is served in generous portions, like all the cakes. Madeleines, carrot cake, cheesecake and various crumbles usually appear too.

The men you do see in Queen of Tarts are usually paired up with a better half. Depending on your own arrangements, sharing a savoury tart and then something sweet between two makes romantic and financial sense. (The portions are big enough to get away with it.)

Serving cakes all day must account for the staff’s cheerfulness, who round out the experience. Guys, put down your chicken fillet rolls; the girls are getting all the good stuff here.

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Rating: 4 out of 5
Visited: about 1 year ago
Location: 133 Baggot St

Most reviewers aspire to a certain degree of objectivity in their work. It’s hard to be honest about the work of a friend, for example, so it might be better to get someone else to do so. Certainly here on LunchBlock I try to focus just on the food, price and atmosphere, and not on the loveliness of the French waitresses in Chez Max with whom I fall instantly and hopelessly in love every time I visit.

Ever since I was taught French in school by native speakers, I’ve been afflicted by Francophilia. After enduring the motorway system of south west England, I feel a palpable sense of relief arriving into that petrol station just outside Calais that sells Martini next to the antifreeze. So a place like Chez Max, with Orangina and tartines and lovely French waitresses, instantly evokes a sense of Pavlovian contentment in me. My judgement therefore clouded in imaginary Gitanes smoke, you might rightly wonder if I’d be able to honestly appraise their croque monsieur (€7.90). I thought the thick slab of toasted sourdough had a good balance of lightness and heft to stand up to the generous mix of ham, bechamel (rich and with a dose of nutmeg) and tangy grilled Gruyere—but honestly, who knows? I was in the throes of a doomed love affair at the time.

The smoked chicken salad with poached pears and walnuts (€7.90) was equally good, I think. The chicken was edged with a dark hue and a deep smoky flavour. The pears were yielding and not too sweet, and the fresh and crispy cos leaves were well dressed in the right amount of a mayonnaise dressing with a restrained undertone of blue cheese. It was a light and summery dish, though I would have liked a larger portion.

French onion soup (€5.90) and pâté de campagne (€7.00) are dishes I’ll be coming back for in the autumn, though I’m also likely to be tempted by a roast quail (€9.50). Chez Max also serve platters of jambon, saucisses, rilettes and cheese all day, dinner in the evening, and on Saturday a brunch special. It’s something of a mini empire on Lower Baggot Street; the shop above the café also serves take-away coffee, pre-packaged sandwiches and salads and a Danish pastry described by sometime LunchBlock contributor Catriona Gray as “life-changing”. At the back of the café, there’s a two-story outdoor sun-trap with tables and gas heaters.

Chez Max serve well-chosen lunchtime food at café prices in what is really a restaurant, which means that you’ll enjoy service normally reserved for the evening, and the prices that go with it. If you’re anything like me though, you won’t enjoy the inevitable ennui that always follows each visit’s hopeless love affair.

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Recent months have seen a glut of quick Mexican eateries open in the city centre. Boojum blew in from Belfast, bringing hefty portions and a dynamite €6 student deal, while Pablo Picante, the cartoon luchador conceived by former ad-man Colm MacNamara, feeds suits from the corner of Baggot St, with a Grafton Street-adjacent location rumoured to be opening in October. Undoubted victories for the burrito aficionado (read: me), but none so great as the return of Burritos & Blues, under new management after its altogether dingier premises in Ranelagh closed in 2008, much to the vexation of the village’s young population.

I dropped in after the lunch rush on a Thursday afternoon to see if the newly-renovated spot on Wexford Street lives up to my rose-tinted memories of the original. Although the blues-rock music piping through the speakers hasn’t changed much, the menu certainly has: rather than a list of different burritos, the new Burritos & Blues asks the customer to choose their fillings, à la Boojum, offering little guidance for the burrito newbie.

The only obvious relic of the brand’s ancient renown is the Silver Bullet (€5.95), once Burritos & Blues’ flagship offering. The “Blow Your Head Off” salsa was sadly unavailable due to a shortage of green tomatoes, so I was offered a finely chopped habanero pepper in its place—an offer that no macho burrito connoisseur could refuse. Immediately reminiscent of the Silver Bullet of yore, the salsa was chunky and fresh, but lacking in the burn of its predecessor (though the bonus habanero certainly helped in this regard). The meat was, just as before, straightforwardly delicious and filling, and the cooling guacamole and sour cream took some of the fire out of the capsicum-heavy yellow chili.

Unfortunately, the tortilla was too thick, a small complaint that only really concerns the first and last bites. I also regrettably included unnecessary grated cheddar cheese and raw white onion. Those minor complaints aside, the freshness of the ingredients coupled with the generosity of the portions makes the Silver Bullet an attractive and hearty option.

Thanks to its bar-adjacent location, Burritos & Blues is the first of Dublin’s burrito joints to be able to cater to the post-pub crowd—it opens until 4am on weekends. Recommended for the bleary-eyed reveller are the Big Ass Nachos (€8), chips with the toppings of your choice—I suggest guacamole, any salsa, cheese, sour cream and jalapenos. It’s a perfect choice to share with a fellow carouser, although it’s a messy option, so to be avoided if you’re attempting any late-night persuasion of the opposite sex.

With two of the Ranelagh incarnation’s core staff, Fahima and Adnan, returning to fill your wraps and your stomach, and proprietor David Stone a relative of a member of the original management, it’s fair to say that Burritos & Blues is very much back in business: but this time with a better location and interior, and the experience that working in a failed restaurant yields. Little more than a fortnight after opening its doors, the quality of the food competes with its more established neighbours, although many problems still need to be ironed out, not least of which the confused and inefficient floor plan. Business already seems to be good for Wexford Street’s newest lunch spot: hopefully this time Burritos & Blues is here to stay.

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Have you heard of Deke’s? It’s a converted shipping container, used as a secure unit by the British Army in Portadown, that is now a greasy spoon for truckers in Ringsend, run by an erstwhile Elvis impersonator. It is “arguably the city’s oddest restaurant”, says the Dubliner’s 100 Best Restaurants guide. Every time I drive past it and its day-glo signs, I’m struck by a desire to go and eat there, but I’m a bit scared of truckers, so I never do.

The city’s oddest café, arguably, opened last winter, when a counter and a few benches appeared in the doorway to Twisted Pepper, a nightclub on Middle Abbey Street. It took me weeks to spatially reconcile sober daytime visits to this coffee shop with slightly less than sober nighttime visits to the same place – the whole café folded away at the end of the day. They served only three things: espresso, cappucino or filter coffee (four if you count the glass of water you got too). But if this is the recipe for the city’s oddest café, it all made perfect sense. The man behind the counter was Colin Harmon, finalist in the World Barista Championship for the last two years running, and the coffee he was serving was very special indeed.

Harmon and his fold-away café have since come in from the cold, literally rather than figuratively, and are now in the bar inside Twisted Pepper, so there’s more space and it’s easier to have a conversation in one of the booths. They even serve brownies now – so yieldingly soft that a spoon is the best tool for them. Most fun, though, is still to sit at the bar and chat with Harmon about the coffee.

My espresso set (€3) consisted of an espresso and a cappucino made with the same beans, in order to compare the coffee both with and without milk. The espresso’s unexpected kick of acidity freshened up the dark richness of the liquid considerably, all in delicious harmony with its silky texture. With milk, the coffee’s acidity imparted a yoghurty note. The first sip of the cappucino demanded an examination of the milk froth. The bubbles were so small as to barely be visible, which lent the froth an extraordinarily rich and creamy quality. Here, the air had been coaxed into supporting the milk without diluting it. “Milk is really difficult,” Harmon told me. Judging by his competitors’ efforts, clearly he must be right.

I won’t describe the filter coffee, as there’s always different blends of beans on the go, but suffice it to say the impromptu tasting I and two companions experienced took a good hour and led us from light and refreshing to musty and rich. Impromptu tastings like that one were both the original Third Floor Espresso’s strength and its weakness. If you just wanted to chat to your companion over your coffee, you were largely out of luck given the cramped quarters. With their move inside, they’ve solved that problem, while still allowing worship at the high altar – sorry, bar – of Third Floor Espresso.

Whether it’s because of, or in spite of, their bizarre genesis, Third Floor Espresso is one of the most pleasant places in Dublin to go for a coffee. Harmon’s warm welcome and complete lack of pretension belies the quality of his product.

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Rating: 4 out of 5
Visited: about 1 year ago
Location: 14/16 S Frederick St

Over the last two years or so, there seems to have developed two stratospheres of pricing in Dublin’s eateries: yesterday’s prices, and today’s. Yesterday’s prices are those of the €4-plus coffees and €8.50 sandwiches. Those prices just don’t seem compatible with today’s world. Newly-opened places to eat generally observe the new world order of prices, and many existing places have brought their prices back down to reality. There are exceptions across the board: Conrad Gallagher’s Salon de Saveurs prices seem to have mysteriously time-travelled from 2006 for example. (They didn’t have chip and pin then either, you know.)

Dunne & Crescenzi is one such spot that has recently adjusted their prices downwards. Their menu is a bit complicated, running the gamut from nibbles to starters to light mains to large mains. Somewhere in there are a few suitable options for lunch.

Bruschetta al pomodoro (€5.50) is executed to perfection. Open-textured ciabatta is toasted to an attractive char and topped with a generous heap of ripe tomatoes, torn basil, salt and pepper and slicked with good olive oil. A dish as simple as this is unforgiving of carelessness: get it right, like Dunne & Cresenczi do, and you begin to wonder why you eat anything else for lunch.

The bruschetta with cannellini beans and sun-dried tomatoes (€6.50) is more substantial. The creamy neutrality of the beans worked well with the texture of the toasted bread and the peppery oil, but the flecks of chopped tomato were tough, as sun-dried tomatoes often are, and were insufficient in number and flavour at that.

Panino piccante (€7.50 in, €5.50 out) with chili salami, roasted peppers and provolone got the ratio of bread to fillings wrong and was dry, which was a pity because those fillings were of good quality and flavour.

Minestrone (€6.00—€8.50), pasta and gnocchi (€9.00—€17.00) and substantial salads (€5.00—€10.00) round out lunchtime options. With an ever-vigilant eye out for bargains, we’d be remiss not to mention the €4 glass of house red or white—perfectly drinkable and a tempting prospect on a Friday lunchtime (in fact, that thought may lead you to that day’s special, as it did I one Friday recently—canneloni pasta with a delicate sauce of yellow courgettes and finely flaked lemon sole was delicious and worth splashing out for at around €16).

Dunne & Crescenzi is now a more and more appealing prospect for lunch, as the springtime weather suits their light, flavoursome food, and their new prices suit our wallets. Recommended.

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Rating: 3 out of 5
Visited: about 1 year ago
Location: 32A Dawson St

One result of us all realising that we didn’t have any money was that rents plummeted and various small food outlets have cropped up that I reckon we wouldn’t have seen before—like Californian Burritos that opened on Baggot St a few weeks ago, Irish Barista Champion Colin Harmon’s pop-up Third Floor Espresso in the Twisted Pepper or the markets colonising Coppinger Row, Curved St and Royal Hibernian Way on weekends.

One such improbable business is Hanley’s Cornish Pasties who sell a dozen or so varieties of Cornish pasties and not much else (just a few hot and cold drinks, in fact—it’s €5 for any pastie and a drink). There’s two locations so far, on Dawson St and under Merchant’s Arch in Temple Bar. The pasties really are Cornish, too: they’re baked there and flown over, and expatriates have given them the Cornish seal of approval.

In the English tradition, they’re over-seasoned and overcooked. Glutinous swede and turnip is layered with long-cooked hunks of beef and ensconced in pastry with the unmistakeable flakiness that comes from suet or dripping or whatever other euphemism the Brits are now using for rendered animal fat as a legitimate ingredient. This is food to go mining on. After my first, I made the mistake of going to the library instead of the coalface and suffered the inevitable food coma as a result.

But somehow this didn’t prevent me from going back. During a cold snap, one of these great lumps of food really hits the spot if you’re hungry. They’re ready-made and served instantly, which works in this case—the turnover is quick enough that you get a crisp crust and piping hot filling. On a bright day, they actually make a chilly quick lunch in Stephen’s Green quite a restorative prospect.

More power to Hanley’s Cornish Pasties, I say—they’re bringing a diversity to Dublin’s food scene the likes of which we haven’t seen before.

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There’s a certain snobbishness about chain restaurants. People seem to believe that food quality is a finite resource, and chains with premises all over the world must be compromising. Well, sometimes they aren’t.

Inspired by the ramen noodle bars in Japan, Wagamama is a dream. Yes, it’s a chain. Yes, you could be anywhere in the world. But sometimes that’s no bad thing. Sometimes it’s nice to step off Dublin’s grey streets and descend into the bright, airy cocoon under Stephen’s Green Shopping Centre. It opens at midday. I know this because once, in my eagerness to be fed, I turned up at 11:30am and had to be told politely but firmly to go away.

The main menu comprises a wide range of noodle, soup and rice dishes. Prices on this menu are generally around the €13 mark, but there is also a €9.95 lunch menu which includes a choice of six main dishes, a drink including wine or beer, available Monday to Friday until 5 o’clock.  Dishes can be modified to cater for vegetarians and those with other dietary restrictions, such as coeliacs.  Green tea is provided free of charge.

My personal recommendations are Chilli Chicken Ramen, Yaki Udon (both €13.45) and the side dish Ebi Gyoza (€7.55). Chilli Chicken Ramen is stir-fried chicken and vegetables, in a mild chilli sauce with soba noodles. It is not overtly spicy, but has notes of lemongrass and ginger. Yaki Udon is a chicken and prawns dish, served with the thicker udon noodles. The thick noodles seem to soak up more flavour and are much more filling than their slender compatriots. Ebi Gyoza is six deep fried prawns, served with chilli sauce and a slice of lime. The only way this dish could be improved would be if there was more of it.

That said, the portions of the main dishes are ridiculously generous. On more than one occasion, I have had to ask meekly if the rest of my meal could be wrapped up. The staff are the most consistently pleasant I’ve encountered in Dublin, and they are very nice about doing this. They’ll give you your leftovers in a box in a bag, with cutlery and a napkin, so you can pretend that carrying around half your lunch for the rest of the day was something you intended to do. The leftovers reheat very well, by the by.

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Rating: 3 out of 5
Visited: over 2 years ago
Location: 15 Leinster St S

Though the Celtic Tiger has gone the way of its Sumatran cousin—that is to say, largely extinct—it has certainly left a legacy of cookie-cutter cafés shilling a dozen varieties of macchiato and other strange imports that were never seen before. And it’s a shame, to some degree, because if you’re feeling nostalgic for a simpler lunch, there aren’t that many options available to you. 

Happily, although Cafe Crêpe actually do serve macchiatos, the atmosphere in this Nassau Street café has that uniquely Irish sense of naffness—and I mean that in the best way possible. From the out-of-date glossy mags to read, to the two lovely nans behind the counter, Cafe Crêpe is unusually welcoming and familiar.

The menu is a large affair that isn’t as focused on crêpes as the name suggests, with soup (€3.30, with bread €4.40), bagels, ciabatta melts (€7.65) and salads (a hefty €10.00 and “Not available on Saturdays”, mysteriously). You’ll get a heap of Hunky Dory’s with your sandwich and even with the crêpes too (savoury €7.65, sweet €4.25—€6.95) —though I don’t think anyone from Britanny, the gastronomic home of the crêpe, has ever heard of Hunky Dory’s, it seems fitting here.

But I almost always plump for a Toasted Special (€5.00)—ham, cheese, tomato and onion on sliced pan—because it just feels right.

Cafe Crêpe is a lively spot full of regulars and excited visiting students (there’s a student discount if you ask). Leave the noughties snobbery at the door that brought us all those macchiatos and you’ll be rewarded with a warm welcome and a proper old-fashioned Toasted Special.

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